The transformation of the language of art is a fact. It is impossible to turn back time. It is neither worse nor better than what was commonly employed in the past. Simply put, this language describes our present and may help us to gain a glimpse of the future.

It is untrue that contemporary art no longer requires any technical skill based on the provocative principle of the ready-made. On the contrary, “never before as today not only are artists, but anyone engaged in a creative activity, permitted, indeed expressly required, to shift between different areas of expertise: in this way a thought is formed through the continuous overlapping of factors. The positive side of this freedom, however, is that modern artists have a range of skills and can act in a very deliberate and planned way, making the most varied working hypotheses come to life with specific skills.” Even to make a crack in the pavement, a fake sun that really tans, a black box in which our body disappears as though in a void (to mention three of the gigantic installations presented at the Tate Modern in London – by Doris Salcedo, Olafur Eliasson and Miroslaw Balka), it is necessary to have a sense of awareness and dexterity that is impossible to improvise. The new techniques appear, however, to have at least one element in common, that of bricolage, of assembling different approaches and materials that do not aim to ensure the durability of the work. This is a reflection of a time when the idea of history as a meaningful whole is in decline and of our growing tendency to perceive time as an elastic, multiple flow, dominated by fragments and chance.

Angela Vettese reflects on how the materials and languages of contemporary art have changed, on artists’ interaction with the public and the role of the creator, who often no longer works alone but with others, not focusing exclusively on manual work but operating as an architect or director too.